For as long as there has been human activity, there has been value in the measurement of that activity. Historically, people have been provided with various opportunities, rewards, advantages, and other incentives as a result of their activity, be it physical or otherwise. For example, the more products that a craftsman creates, the more revenue and/or recognition he may receive. In another example, a runner who completes a course the fastest or runs the furthest in a set amount of time may receive an award. In more modern times, many entities have sought to incentivize physical activity, such as by using computing applications to measure physical activity and judge a competition among users based thereon. For example, an application program associated with a pedometer may have a user compete against friends in seeing which person can walk the most steps in a day or week.
While wearable device providers often develop their own application programs that can provide incentives to their users, other entities not directly associated with the devices may have a desire to provide content to users based on their activity. For example, a shoe company may want to advertise shoes to heavy walkers. In another example, a sporting goods company may want to advertise sport products to runners, cyclists, and other athletes that are tied to their specific sport and activity level. However, these entities do not often have direct access to such information. In order to get this information, the entity (e.g., content provider) must contact the entity associated with the wearable computing device (e.g., device provider) and develop a system to receive activity data from that entity. This process must then be repeated for every other entity, every wearable computing device, and every type of activity. As a result, it is extremely inefficient, resource-intensive, and impractical for an entity to provide content based on user activity.
Thus, there is a need for a technical solution where activity data associated with a wearable computing device can be standardized in an automated fashion, such that content can be identified based on standardized activity. In addition, the use of standardization can also provide technical advantages in the marrying of activity data to other sources of data, such as transaction data, for more improved content distribution.